Eddie Murphy is getting all the way real about his relationship with Bill Cosby.
Speaking in a new interview for The New York Times’ The Interview podcast, the Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F star debunked the rumor that he and late fellow comedian Richard Pryor didn’t get along. He then shared that the ire was moreso between him and Bill Cosby, though Murphy looked up to him at the time.
Explaining how Cosby initially critiqued his material, Murphy chalked it up to the industry only allowing there to be only one successful Black person at a time in the spotlight.
“Language was the way he could come at it,” the Shrek star said. “It wasn’t so much language; it was the times that we were in. This is back when it was, you know, one Black person at a time was getting in the mix.”
He continued:
“When I come on the scene, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby were like, ‘Oh, this is the new shit that’s coming up?’ If there’s a new thing coming on, that’s a threat to whatever their thing is. That’s what Bill Cosby had.”
He later went on to say that Pryor saw him an an up-and-comer who was trying to be like him, and consequently didn’t see him as a threat; the two would go on to co-star in the 1989 film “Harlem Nights.” But that wasn’t the case for the “I, Spy” star.
“Bill Cosby was like, ‘Is this the new way it’s gonna be now? They’re gonna be onstage grabbing their dick and talking all crazy?’” Murphy said. “So he could come at me with ‘Oh, the language!’ when it was more: ‘It’s one at a time, and is this the new guy who’s gonna knock me out of the spot?’ That’s what was going on back then.”
If this explanation sounds similar, then you may recall Murphy’s popular 1987 standup set, Raw, where he did a bit of a phone call he received from Cosby chastising him about his profanity.
Needless to say, the two comedians have had their fair share of success in the years since that special, though one could argue that one of them has done better than the other.